Exhibition catalogue – Musée Barbier-Mueller, Geneva, October 29, 2025 – May 31, 2026

Bilingual edition: French and English

With a preface by Séverine Fromaigeat
A conversation between Paul Maheke & Séverine Fromaigeat
A poetic essay by Quinn Latimer
Catalogue entries by various specialists

Edition Musée Barbier-Mueller

64 pages

L’article  Pleasing the Spirits est apparu en premier sur Barbier-Mueller Museum.

Exhibition catalogue – From 23 May 2024 to 5 January 2025

Bilingual edition: English and French texts.

• Preface by Caroline Barbier-Mueller
• Texts by Lionel Bovier
• Interview with Spark Vett, Parker Williams and John Armleder
• Catalogue entries by various specialists

Co-edition Musée Barbier-Mueller – Colophon

104 pages, 48 colour plates

L’article Transparents, John Armleder & le musée Barbier-Mueller est apparu en premier sur Barbier-Mueller Museum.

Exhibition catalogue

Published by the Barbier-Mueller Museum

Bilingual edition: English and French texts.

• Preface by Thierry Barbier-Mueller
• Texts by Hans Irrek, Arik Levy and Zoé Ouvrier
• Catalogue entries by various specialists

151 pages

As the Musée Barbier-Mueller celebrates its 45th anniversary, it welcomes, in an original dialogue with pieces from its collection, the works of two contemporary artists: the sculptor, engraver and painter Zoé Ouvrier and the sculptor and visual artist Arik Levy.

The two artists have been given carte blanche; each in their own way asserts a strong and deeply personal link with non-Western arts, with the work and sensibility of artists and craftsmen, an intimacy with the works at the border between the visible and the invisible.

L’article Invisible thoughts, le musée Barbier-Mueller, Arik Levy & Zoé Ouvrier est apparu en premier sur Barbier-Mueller Museum.

Exhibition catalogue

Published by the Barbier-Mueller Museum

132 pages

An exhibition

This project is built around comparisons between select pieces from the Barbier-Mueller collections and works that Jacques Kaufmann has produced in his studio and around the world, over a long stretch of time, the aim being to identify similarities – as well as differences – between them.

The exhibition juxtaposes works of different origins, time periods and materials, suggesting resonances but also inviting viewers to create their own connections. Ultimately, it is the viewer who “makes the picture”.

An encounter

A sanctuary of objects of varying origins, each one more remarkable than the last, the Musée Barbier-Mueller houses a collection that is recognized internationally as a leading centre for the so-called “primitive” – or “distant”– arts, depending on the terminology in use at different times.

Ceramics, which comes under the umbrella of contemporary art and its contextual practices, also looks for encounters with whatever produces continuities and disjunctions within human expression, across time and space. In the field of the arts, the past does not really pass. Forms are reactivated, re-emerge, reappropriate one other, come together again.

The disparities, connections, conjunctions, analogies, intervals between works allow us to perceive those things that might contribute to bringing about our long-term collective effort as humans to meet our fundamental spiritual needs. The endurance and movement of forms contradict the notion of progress in art.

This exhibition features in the program of the 50th Congress of the International Academy of Ceramics (IAC), organized by swissceramics, which will be held at the Geneva International Congress Centre from 12^th to 16^th September 2022 on the theme “Melting Pot. From the Alchemical Crucible to the Cultural Crucible”. This event is accompanied by 35 major exhibitions organized by partner museums and galleries in Romandie.

L’article Écarts et correspondances, le musée Barbier-Mueller et Jacques Kaufmann, artiste céramiste est apparu en premier sur Barbier-Mueller Museum.

Exhibition catalogue

Published by the Barbier-Mueller Museum

144 pages, 149 colour illustrations

Exhibited today for the first time at the Barbier-Mueller Museum in its entirety, this collection of Ðông Sơn art is the most important known, outside the Vietnamese national collections. It consists of prestige or sacred objects, fighting instruments and ornaments testifying to a culture that takes its name from the village of Ðông Sơn located in the province of Thanh Hoa, in the north of present-day Vietnam, where numerous archaeological remains have been unearthed. These and those from many other sites attest to an intense artistic activity responding to the demands of the aristocracy of kingdoms settled in the valleys of the Red, Ma and Black rivers, which provided them with wealth and a means of communication.

The Ðông Sơn culture, which flourished between the 4th century BC and the 4th century AD over a fairly large area, gave rise to its own art and style, which was very often influenced by the traditions of neighbouring southern China. Pieces of Ðông Sơn or resembling Ðông Sơn have been found in mainland and island Southeast Asia, notably in Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia, the result of the commercial and technical exchanges that take place in this geographical area and which suggest the existence in these regions of “Ðông Sơn traditions”.

The texts and notes by Dr Van Viet Nguyen (Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Prehistory, Hanoi) offer a contextual reading and a stylistic description of the objects on display, while the contribution by Pierre Baptiste (General Curator at the Musée Guimet, Paris) offers a study of the relations that the Ðông Sơn culture maintained with China.

May the visitors to the exhibition and readers of this catalogue experience a delight similar to that felt by the collector Jean Paul Barbier-Mueller, who devoted a sustained interest to these pieces with their delicate lines and refined decoration, produced thanks to a remarkable technical mastery.

L’article Art de Đông Sơn, Asie du Sud-Est, dans les collections Barbier-Mueller est apparu en premier sur Barbier-Mueller Museum.

Exhibition catalogue, French and English edition.

Steve McCurry Studios

Concept: Bonnie McCurry V’Soske

In collaboration with: Biba Giacchetti and Sudest 57

Edited by the Musée Barbier-Mueller.

96 pages, 60 colour plates.

Celebrated photographer Steve McCurry’s unique vision of the world led to this collaboration with the Musée Barbier-Mueller. The photographer, known for his openness to humanity, wanted to explore the philosophy of Wabi-Sabi (the beauty of the imperfect, impermanence and incompleteness) through thirty of his works.

Combining these images with objects from its collections, the Musée Barbier-Mueller looked at formal criteria. The resulting juxtapositions offer a new perspective on one of the most-recognized photographers in the world, creating both narrative and aesthetic echoes.

L’article Steve McCurry & Musée Barbier-Mueller: Wabi-Sabi, Beauty in Imperfection est apparu en premier sur Barbier-Mueller Museum.

The catalogue includes:

• an article by Baptiste Brun, lecturer in contemporary art history at the Université Rennes 2 and exhibition curator, who offers a reflection on categorization in the arts;
• an article by Sarah Lombardi, director of the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, who speaks of Jean Dubuffet’s encounter with the Barbus Müller;
• an article by Bruno Montpied that relates the research that allowed him to identify the creator of several Barbus Müller;
• a catalogue of photographic plates with reproductions of the Barbus Müller, works by Jean Dubuffet, and pieces from the collections of the Musée Barbier-Mueller displayed at the exhibition, accompanied by catalogue entries.

100 pages. 79 colour  illustrations, 34 black and white illustrations.

Published by the Musée Barbier-Mueller and Édition In Fine, 2020.

L’article Les Barbus Müller. Leur énigmatique sculpteur enfin démasqué ! est apparu en premier sur Barbier-Mueller Museum.

Exhibition catalogue.

With texts by : Monique Barbier-Mueller, Alexandra Calmy, Michel Sidibé, André Magnin , Pierre Amrouche, Bernard de Grunne.

Selection of photographies of Malick Sidibé.

Selection of objects from Mali preserved in the Barbier-Mueller museum collections.

127 pages, 129 color and B&W pictures, 2 maps.

Copyright : MAGNIN-A, Lucille Reyboz, Monique Barbier-Mueller, Pierre Amrouche. 2019.

L’article Sous l’oeil de Malick Sidibé, et un chant contre le sida est apparu en premier sur Barbier-Mueller Museum.

Exhibition catalogue, Musée Barbier-Mueller, Geneva, 2018.

Texts by Prof. Suzanne Preston Blier.

128 pages, 111 colour illustrations, 28 black and white illustrations, 1 map.

Edited by the Musée Barbier-Mueller and Editions Ides et Calendes, 2018.

L’article Asen : Mémoires de fer forgé, art vodun du Danhomè est apparu en premier sur Barbier-Mueller Museum.

Exhibition catalogue, Musée Barbier-Mueller, Geneva, 2018.

This intimate and delicate book presents her artistic vision of these objects. Parallel to this vision, different texts written by a dealer, an anthropologist, a collector, a curator, and a scenographer evoke the transformation of the objects into works of art.

126 pages, 54 colour pictures by Silvia Bächli and 1 black and withe illustration.

Edited by the Musée Barbier-Mueller, 2018.

Texts in English and French.

L’article Faraway Arts, So Close in Silvia Bächli’s Eyes est apparu en premier sur Barbier-Mueller Museum.